As a trucking company, improving fuel efficiency is likely one of the most impactful initiatives you can take to increase profits. By setting clear goals, tracking performance, and taking action to address exceptions, you can make significant progress in this area.
To start, build consensus with your management team and set a goal for performance improvement–increasing fuel efficiency by 5% over the next six months is a common one. Use lag measures, like overall miles per gallon, to track progress, and lead measures, like driving miles per gallon, long idle percentage, excess speed, and hard acceleration, to identify immediate areas for improvement.
Integrating data from your truck telematics system, TMS, maintenance system, and fuel purchase data into a centralized database will allow you to more easily analyze performance and identify trends. Adding meaningful business attributes, such as division, terminal, driver manager, and truck specifications, will help you drill down into specific areas of the business and target your efforts where they will be most impactful.
Using a platform like Microsoft Power BI to build reports and track performance will make it easy for your team to access and manage data. Create reports that show personal performance at every level, from drivers to division heads, and rank performance to highlight exceptions. For instance, if you have drivers or trucks that are underperforming compared to others in the same division with similar specifications, route those trucks to maintenance to rule out any issues and coach and counsel drivers as needed.
Having an experienced driver serve as a fuel program coordinator can be especially helpful in managing exceptions, coaching and counseling drivers, and providing feedback to management. It's also important to communicate performance to your entire team, recognizing those who are doing an excellent job and providing incentives as appropriate.
Finally, use fuel consumption and cost data to inform your truck purchasing decisions and specifications to set your team up for even more success in the future. By following these steps, you can substantially increase the profits of your trucking company by improving fuel efficiency with a data-driven approach.
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